


Cohort Study

by embarrassing old stuff from LJ pre-2015 (prevaricator)



Category: NewS (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Gen, murder of a non-major character, some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-24
Updated: 2013-09-24
Packaged: 2018-10-15 11:55:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10555914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prevaricator/pseuds/embarrassing%20old%20stuff%20from%20LJ%20pre-2015
Summary: For the last three years of Massu’s life as a cargo specialist, theJS Corp. Placidhas lived up to its advertisements as a safe, laid-back space cruise. A murder on board changes everything.





	

**Author's Note:**

> In case anyone is confused, this space cruise ship has Japanese-style public baths—people shower off first, then hop in giant shared bathtubs together. Originally for [](http://je-otherworlds.livejournal.com/profile)[je_otherworlds](http://je-otherworlds.livejournal.com/) with screwed-up cut text.

The weight read on Cargo Zone Eight is several hundred pounds off.

It’s after 3:00 a.m. on their last night in Kauai, and the last shipments for Massu’s cargo section have only just been secured. He was already more than a little irritated—after a two-day delay due to bad weather, the shipments were expected in and loaded by 6:00 p.m., so he’d ducked out of his dinner plans with his cohort only to wait several more hours for one last truck that had gotten lost.

And now he’s more than five hundred pounds over his zone’s expected weight, which is troublesome.

 

 

Two hours later, Massu yawns and digs his toes into the sand and waits for a cool wave to wash over them. The sky is lightening, so he turns and meanders along the beach, determined to find a beach-facing restaurant with outdoor seating that does breakfast. There has to be one; he’s made sure he’s on the sunrise-facing side of this peninsula. They’re a good two weeks away from their next stop, and he needs to feel some warmth and real sunshine one last time before he gets back on the ship.

Eventually he finds a restaurant that suits his qualifications, with a patio that ends on the sand and several groggy tourists making the most of their dwindling time on this planet. The hostess asks for a credit card before she’ll even seat him, saying something about having trouble with JS Corp people lately. Shrugging, Massu digs out his wallet.

The food is delicious, although he finds that food is rarely unappealing after working all day and most of a night. It makes him feel slightly more human and immensely less irritated at the discovery, after over an hour of checking numbers and checking cargo, that his supervisor had accepted a request from the medical team for extra cargo space for three extra organ donors and their heavy storage units and placed them in Massu’s zone without any notification whatsoever.

The sun rises presently, lighting up the side of the space cruise liner that Massu has called home for the past three years and dimming the glitzy neon sign on the side that reads, “JS CORP PLACID. Cheerfully Going Where Plenty Of Men Have Gone Before”.

The sun here looks mostly like Earth’s sun, just like the beach looks like it could be somewhere in Hawai’i. There’s a reason this planet is named Kauai. It’s almost boring to Massu, who didn’t sign a contract for five years of dull menial labor on a cruise ship just to see things he could have seen on Earth.

By the time he’s finished his food he has to walk quickly to make it back to the ship on time. He reaches the gangway with five minutes to spare and heads straight to his bunk, falling asleep before he can even take his safety harness off.

 

 

 

“Apparently the medical zone was full, so Yoshikawa put the extras in my zone but forgot to tell me.”

Koyama hmms in acknowledgment while Massu slurps up more ramen.

“And now you’re freaked out because there are organ donors in your zone,” Shige laughs.

“They’re creepy!” Massu glares at Shige.

“What? It’s not like they can think or anything, they’re not going to come after you.”

Or so he says. Massu knows it’s an unreasonable fear, but it’s just like how he’s always afraid he’ll be murdered in his sleep by a crowd of vengeful bugs after killing one of their comrades. Only worse, because organ donor clones are essentially human, aside from the claims that their ability for conscious thought has been disconnected. The whole concept of being able to “disconnect” those things has never quite made sense to Massu, but it seems to him that scientists and doctors are prone to making mistakes.

Shuddering, he changes the subject before Shige can make fun of him any further. “How was dinner last night?”

Koyama and Shige look at each other and wince.

“The food was good, but we don’t really remember much of it after that,” Koyama says, sheepishly. “A lot of staff were there. I’m sure we just did karaoke all night.”

“I don’t even remember having more than one drink,” Tegoshi adds. “But I had a killer headache this morning.”

“You’d be less of a lightweight if you’d eat more,” Shige comments, eyeing Tegoshi’s half-eaten bowl of ramen. They all know he won’t finish it.

“But then how would I maintain my figure?” Tegoshi bats his lashes. Shige rolls his eyes and elbows him.

Shige looks at the clock, curses, and hops out of his seat. Koyama gives him a quizzical look.

“It’s movie night with Maruyama,” Shige says. “I said I’d be there ten minutes ago.”

 

 

 

 

Massu is climbing the stairs to get back to his bunk after a long day of work when he spots a green-shirted crew member with a familiarly slender build on his way down the stairs. Bridge crew don’t normally come down to the cargo levels, and Tegoshi doesn’t normally walk by Massu without a greeting. Massu turns and calls, “Tegoshi!” as the man passes him, but he gets no response. He frowns, but he supposes it could be someone similar looking—the man had kept his head down the whole time, so Massu couldn’t get a good look at his face. Shrugging, he continues his daily trek up to his bunk.

Normally when Massu mistakes a stranger for an acquaintance, he can immediately spot all of the differences the next time he sees the actual acquaintance. There’s always something obvious, like darker hair, better posture, or more body fat. But when he reaches the hallway that leads to his tiny room and finds Tegoshi standing by his door, in the only difference he can spot is that Tegoshi is in plain clothes, not his uniform. Massu briefly wonders if Tegoshi took the elevator back up and changed inside of it, but he decides that would be too weird.

Tegoshi grins when he spots Massu. “Massu, want to take a bath in the bridge crew bath today? Shige’s already up there!”

He has an arm around Massu’s shoulders and is tugging him in the direction of the elevators before he’s even finished his last sentence. And it’s not that Massu _minds_ being invited to the fancy bridge crew baths, with their fun scented waters and everything, but he wishes Tegoshi would at least give him the illusion of a choice in the matter.

The bathroom for bridge crew and medical staff is huge, with each of three large areas themed after natural hot spring wonders of the universe. Massu’s favorite, when Shige or Tegoshi invite him in, is the one designed to look like the Cave Pools of Venus III, with bunches of waterfalls that hide miniature “caves.”

Massu is sitting on the little bench behind one of the waterfalls when Tegoshi slides in and sits next to him. The waterfalls are quite noisy, and Massu wonders if it’s really a good idea for them to have these in a public bath. They seem perfect for being naughty, and the thought of people doing _that_ in the shared water grosses him out to the point of wanting to leave. He tries not to think about it.

“Hey, Massu,” Tegoshi says, practically shouting to be heard over the waterfall. “Your cargo zone is mostly food, right?”

Not many people ask Massu for details about his job once he tells them what he does, and if anything, Tegoshi has shown even less interest than most over the past three years. “Yep. I mean, I have two, but they’re both all food.”

“Are there any other cargo zones that have food?”

“Lots. I’ve got all of the frozen goods and most of the grains and powdery things. Flour, sugar, salt, ground spices, bouillon, that sort of thing.”

Tegoshi purses his lips. “Can I ask you a weird favor, then? Could you get me a small sample of each of those?”

It’s an odd request, but Massu knows that refusing to do something for Tegoshi is usually more trouble than simply doing what he wants. “That’s a lot of things.”

“How about just the different flours and sugars for now, then? And it can be a pinch of each, as long as they’re kept separate.”

“Why?”

“The ramen last night didn’t taste weird to you? I was wondering if the suppliers on Kauai didn’t water the stuff down somehow. So I thought I’d have Shige test it, to see.”

The ramen tasted fine to Massu, and Tegoshi ate as much of it as he always does. But he figures as long as Tegoshi isn’t asking him to put anything into his supplies, there can’t be any harm in it, so he agrees. “But just a pinch! If I end up short on anything, it’ll be trouble.”

Shige frowns at them when they finally duck out from under the waterfall and hunt him down in the Yellowstone pools. “I was looking everywhere for you!”

“Aww, were you jealous?” Tegoshi slides over to him and wraps an arm around his shoulders.

Flustered, Shige twists away and makes a show of wringing out the small towel that has fallen from his hair into the bath in the process. Massu wonders if Tegoshi knows how correct he is. He’s tempted to sidle up close to Tegoshi just to see how Shige would react, but that would be mean.

 

 

 

 

The hallway leading to the bridge crewmembers’ rooms is only visibly different from the one leading to Massu’s by the color of the shades on the wall sconces. For all that they have a fancy bath that Massu can’t access without an invitation, he knows their rooms aren’t much different from his own, either.

As he walks down the hallway, the tiny bags of samples in the pocket of his hoodie feel heavier and heavier. They’re stolen goods, even if it isn’t hurting anyone and he’s not sure why Tegoshi would even want them.

There’s a small crowd gathered when Massu rounds the corner to Tegoshi’s room. He considers coming back another time—wouldn’t want anyone to see him handing off small bags of powder to a navigator. That could be misinterpreted. Then he hears Tegoshi shouting at the middle of the crowd.

“Why would I do that? I’ve never even met her!”

Concerned for his friend, Massu makes his way through the crowd until he can see what’s going on. Tegoshi’s back is to him, and he’s facing several security guards. A couple are familiar—Maruyama, in particular, is looking distressed.

“We don’t know why you did it, but we know you did it,” says a security guard Massu doesn’t recognize. He gestures with a remote, and a 3VD starts playing in the air between him and Tegoshi.

The video shows another hallway nearly identical to the one they’re standing in, this one with yellow lampshades. _Entertainment personnel housing?_ Massu wonders. It’s not anywhere he’s ever had reason to go.

A blond man of small stature carrying a duffel bag enters the frame and knocks on a door. A woman in a blue tracksuit answers it, and it takes Massu a while to recognize her as one of the ship’s comedians. He watches in horror as the man pulls a large knife from the bag he’s carrying and lunges at the woman with it. They stumble back into the woman’s room, and the man emerges a few minutes later with a bloody knife.

As he comes out of the room and walks down the hall toward the camera, it becomes undeniably obvious that it’s Tegoshi. He can’t see Tegoshi’s expression, but his friend hasn’t moved for the duration of the video.

A reluctant-looking Maruyama and Yasuda approach Tegoshi as the other security guard says, “Tegoshi Yuya, you’re under arrest for the murder of Golly Golden Gloria.”

As Yasuda pats Tegoshi down, his eyes widen. He gropes at the small of Tegoshi’s back and comes up with a small gun.

Massu’s jaw drops, and he speaks for the first time. “Why do you have a gun, Tegoshi?”

“Because I’m a Space Marshal.” Tegoshi sounds exasperated. Yasuda fishes a badge from his back pocket and scans it with his phone, frowning. “I always have a gun! For that matter, why would I use a knife to murder someone when I have a gun?”

The logic sounds pretty good to Massu, but the video evidence is hard to dispute. He wasn’t aware that Tegoshi was a Space Marshal, but Space Marshals are supposed to be anonymous. Yasuda stares at his phone and frowns harder. “It looks like this is authentic, but I’m still going to have to arrest you.”

Tegoshi turns to look at Massu as the security guards take him away in handcuffs. He makes some sort of gesture with his eyes, flicking them down toward the floor, but Massu doesn’t know what he’s trying to say.

 

 

 

“Maybe,” Koyama sits up suddenly. “Maybe someone got plastic surgery to look like him. If it was a passenger, the passenger count would be right, and nobody would even notice.”

“That would be pretty hard,” Shige says. They’re crowded into Massu’s tiny room, eating leftover sweets from Koyama’s bakery. Rather, Koyama is devouring sweets and Shige is avoiding his. Which is irritating, because Shige took the desk chair, so Koyama is sitting on Massu’s bed. It irks him to see Shige’s éclair sitting uneaten on the tiny desk while Koyama is getting crumbs all over Massu’s comforter, but now doesn’t seem to be the right time for complaining about his friends’ poor planning.

Thinking about it, Massu agrees with Shige. Everything down to the bone structure was Tegoshi.

“Did he seem weird to you yesterday, though?” Koyama asks suddenly. “I saw him in the hallway, but he didn’t even say hello.”

So it wasn’t just Massu who experienced that. He relates his own experience from the day before.

“But then, if there’s a Tegoshi look-alike on board, won’t someone see him and call security? Then they’ll have two Tegoshis and realize their mistake.”

“Yeah,” Shige says absentmindedly. For some reason, he’s got his head on the desk and is staring up under Massu’s lampshade. He’s taking Tegoshi’s arrest pretty hard, Massu thinks, even if he’s trying to act matter-of-fact about it.

“You know what?” Shige straightens up suddenly. “I think we all need to take a bath. To calm down and all.”

Massu and Koyama share a confused look, but Shige opens the door and waits, looking at them expectantly until they follow him out.

Shige showers off faster than Massu does, but he stops to comment that he’s going to the Cave Pools of Venus. Suddenly understanding why Shige was insisting on a bath, Massu watches him go to figure out which cave he’s in. (When he looks away, a man two showers down from him catches his eye and grins. Massu considers telling him that Shige is down a love interest and could probably do with a new one.)

 

 

 

“Your lamp is bugged,” Shige says when Massu slides into the cave. Koyama is already there, and there isn’t a whole lot of room.

“What? Why?” Massu doesn’t like the idea of someone being in his sole private space on the ship.

“Probably because you know Tegoshi,” Shige says.

“To see if I know anything?”

“Well, then they’re going to be disappointed,” Koyama snorts. “How could Tegoshi kill anyone? For that matter, who the hell would let him be a Space Marshal?”

“At least nobody let you be a Space Marshal,” Shige comments. Koyama shoves him back against the waterfall, and he loses his footing and flounders for a moment.

When he’s finally found his way back to the bench, he pauses and frowns. “Or do you know something, Massu?”

“Something like what?”

Shige purses his lips and looks from Massu to Koyama and back. “About a month ago, Tegoshi brought me a sample of something and asked me to test it for drugs. It came back positive for CKPN.”

Massu meets Koyama’s eyes and Koyama shrugs, so they both look expectantly at Shige, who rolls his eyes and sighs.

“It’s an illegal drug that makes people happier. It was developed to treat depression, but it was dropped for having serious side effects.”

“Side effects?”

“Basically, it makes people incapable of getting properly worried about things. So people would do things like light their clothes on fire and just think the feeling of getting burned was sort of cool.”

Thinking about it, Massu grimaces. “So maybe Tegoshi took some and thought killing someone would be fun?”

It’s disturbingly easy to imagine Tegoshi trying some illegal drug for the hell of it. Koyama opens his mouth like he’s going to defend Tegoshi’s honor, but he stops and looks dejected.

“No,” Shige says. “I mean, maybe. But he brought me the sample after I mentioned that a lot of people on the ship who were coming in with injuries were testing positive for low levels of CKPN.”

Massu stops and thinks, then tells them about Tegoshi asking him to bring samples of things.

“So he was investigating,” Koyama says, smiling.

That doesn’t seem like something to smile about. “Would that mean he thinks our food is drugged?”

Koyama stops smiling. “You mean people might just like my éclairs because they’ve got happy drugs in them?”

“I don’t think that’s the biggest problem here,” Shige says. He wants to test the samples, so Massu loans his hoodie to Shige in the locker room with the samples still in the pockets.

 

 

 

That night, Massu can’t sleep. Knowing that someone has been in his room when he wasn’t there and can now hear everything he does keeps him on edge. Shige said they shouldn’t let on that they know about the bug until they know who to avoid, which means leaving it in place. Which, in turn, leaves Massu tossing and turning all night, trying not to fart and worrying about whether he talks in his sleep.

 

 

 

Shige returns Massu’s hoodie the next evening with Koyama in tow.

“Don’t worry, it’s clean,” Shige says.

“I brought cupcakes!” Koyama says, holding up a case. Massu eyes it suspiciously.

“Why don’t we go eat in your room?” he asks. “Or the lounge?”

Obviously nowhere outside the bath is safe to talk, anyway. Even Koyama and Shige are quiet as they take their cupcakes to the lounge at the end of Massu’s hallway. Every once in a while, one of them will look up and open his mouth, then sigh and take another bite of cupcake.

Massu would prefer gyoza, but they haven’t tested the meat. He stares out the window at the stars drifting past the ship and idly wishes he were on solid ground. Somewhere without centralized supplies.

As they’re about to leave, Maruyama walks into the lounge at the tail end of a group of security personnel who live down the hall from Massu. His eyes light on Shige, and he makes his way over to their table.

“Shige, I was just looking for you,” he says. “I’m sorry, but they’re not allowing Tegoshi any visitors at the moment. The boss is being really strict this time. It’s a pretty big deal to have a Space Marshal murdering people.”

He hands Shige a set of forms with “Rejected” stamped in red on the front, looking apologetic.

“I understand,” Shige says. “Thanks for letting me know.”

Maruyama pauses, looking awkward. Then he adds, “The reasons for rejection are listed on the last page, if you’re interested.”

“I see,” Shige says. He sets the papers down on the table. “I’ll look it over later.”

 

 

 

“Massu,” Shige says. “Are there any supplies that go to passengers but not crew or staff?”

They’re in a cave again—a different one, this time, because Shige’s afraid that someone will eventually catch on to them. This one is really meant for two people, and Koyama looks uncomfortable with his knees tucked under his chin.

Massu thinks about it. “The food is all mixed. It has to be, to save money. Everything requires its own special storage conditions, so we keep like items together. Why?”

Shige comments that most of the CKPN-related injuries have been passengers, not crew or staff members.

“Oh,” Massu thinks some more. “Can it be spread by air? Nakamaru said the air tanks and ventilation are all separated by floor and zone. He says that way there’s a buffer zone against any leaks, and contagion can’t be spread too far by the ventilation system.”

Passengers are all housed on the topmost floors, with the shopping, recreation, and eateries all between them and the staff and crew. While there are cafeterias available for the staff and crew, there’s no ban against them shopping and eating amongst the passengers during their off hours, as long as they’re well-behaved.

“That would work,” Shige says. He grimaces. “Is there any way you can get a sample of the air that goes to passengers’ rooms?”

Massu doesn’t know how the air system works, let alone how to collect a sample of it. He suspects he would cause an emergency evacuation of the whole ship if he tried to touch anything.

“My shop makes deliveries to the passengers, so I could let Hikaru run the shop for a bit and do the deliveries tomorrow,” Koyama says. “Is there any way I could do it from up there?”

Shige grins. “The lab has air monitors in case we ever suspect airborne pathogens. You can deliver me some doughnuts in the morning on your way up.”

“Aww, Shige!” Koyama exclaims. “You’ve never asked me to bring sweets before.”

“I’d ask you to bring something that _isn’t_ sweet if you made anything other than sweets,” Shige groans.

“Oh, and one other thing. In that set of documents Maruyama passed me earlier was a printout of an email Tegoshi sent to someone called ‘Director Shiga Yasunobu.’ It was a report of finding CKPN in a package addressed to Yanagisawa with a request for further instruction. This Shiga person told Tegoshi not to investigate further, and repeated it when Tegoshi told him about the CKPN-related injuries.”

Koyama gasps. “Chief of Customer Service Operations Yanagisawa?”

Shige nods.

“So if it really is in the air on the passenger levels…” Koyama starts.

“Then we need to get Tegoshi and get the fuck out of here,” Shige finishes. “I’m pretty sure Shiga is the director of the Commercial Spacetravel Safety Association.”

“But how do we get Tegoshi out?” Massu asks.

An hour later, they have a half-baked escape plan when they finally have to leave the bath or risk of their insides becoming hard-boiled. They all agree that their best chance will be when they land on planet AKB48 in a week and a half.

 

 

 

Massu looks at his list as he stocks his cart for the first trip of the day. Somebody wants frozen fish—a rarity, since the Placid typically docks often enough to pick up fresh meat and seafood for its customers. Cringing, he goes back to the back freezer for the first time since Kauai to dig some out. The organ donors are tucked into the freezer unit next to it in their cases, hooked up to life support. That particular freezer’s door light is red because its temperature is actually well above freezing, and it’s been serving as a reminder that there are not-quite-living corpses in Massu’s Zone.

With the sort of morbid curiosity that drives people to Google insects from tropical areas, Massu peers in through the glass door as he goes by. There’s nothing to see, he knows, aside from three large boxes that look like large refrigerators and some blinking lights.

Except the lights aren’t all blinking, which means something’s wrong. Massu frowns. He thinks the light for the alarm system is off, but he hasn’t had to deal with organ donors since his training three years ago.

Unsure if actual corpses are better or worse than semi-corpses, he stops by the hospital after his first round of deliveries to make sure they haven’t forgotten the Zone Eight organ donors on their list for daily checkup.

The girl at the front desk is confused when he asks, saying that she didn’t think they had any in there, but she sends him on to the organ donor manager, Yokoyama.

Yokoyama frowns at his list. “No, we definitely didn’t request extras. It’s true that we’ve had an unusual number of organ transplants in recent months, but our original space allotment is more than enough to handle it. An ‘unusual number of transplants’ being three or four people. We only brought on one organ donor at Kauai, and that was to replace one we lost.”

His eyes widen, suddenly, and Massu wonders how much he knows. Yokoyama, Maruyama, and Yasuda are all in the same cohort, meaning they joined the ship staff at the same time and had orientation together on their base planet before coming on board. Cohorts are encouraged to stick together during their first few months on board, in an effort to reduce early contract cancellations due to loneliness. It’s a successful program even when the cohorts have widely differing jobs, like Massu’s own friends.

“Um,” Massu says. He doesn’t think Yokoyama will say anything to anyone, but he’s not sure about bugs. “About how long does it take to clone a person? I’ve always wondered.”

“Not long, these days,” Yokoyama says. “You just need a DNA sample, an MRI, a 3-D printer, and all the ingredients of a human. If you had the DNA sample and materials in advance, you’d only need the source person for ten minutes or so, and then another hour for the printer to work its magic.”

Yokoyama looks over his glasses at Massu. “And, in case you’ve forgotten, we keep blood samples of all of our staff, crew, and passengers on hand for the duration of their stay on the _Placid_.”

“Why do you need an MRI if you have the DNA?” Massu asks. “I never got that.”

“For a generic organ donor, you really don’t. There are actually a handful of sequences that are proven to be the most easily accepted for most people, and those are the ones we use. But DNA isn’t the only thing that affects a person’s appearance, so if you’re going for the look-alike kind of clone you need an MRI.”

Since he’s at the hospital, he stops by the lab on the way out to see Shige, who looks tired and upset but says nothing about either. There’s an untouched box of warm doughnuts next to him. Massu grabs one for the road, but halfway through it realizes he’s sick of sweets.

 

 

 

 

For the rest of the day, Massu skirts the freezer with the clones of questionable provenance every time he’s in Zone Eight. He needs to look, but since he’s not sure what good that would do, he puts it off. It’s too much of a coincidence for the boxes to contain anything other than what he thinks they do.

He nearly screams when he runs into Yoshikawa in the afternoon, but his boss doesn’t seem to notice. Massu greets him and pretends to be in a rush when Yoshikawa says he’d like to speak with him.

 

 

 

In the evening, they meet in the bath again.

Shige and Koyama look grim. The air in the passenger floors was positive for low levels of CKPN, and Shige had stayed up late watching surveillance videos from a data chip hidden in the packet Maruyama had passed him.

They clearly showed the murderous Tegoshi heading to the cargo bay afterward, and another Tegoshi showing up outside Massu’s door in plainclothes before the fake Tegoshi reached the ground floor.

Massu relates his story about the fake organ donors, and they look at him with alarm. Koyama is ready to ditch the bath and go look when Shige stops him.

“If we show up on the cargo hold cameras, it’ll be suspicious.” He says. “Especially if Massu’s right about his boss being involved.”

So they resolve that Massu will have to look himself. He says he’ll do it the next day, but in the middle of the night he’s still awake. Slipping out the door, he makes his way down the stairs to Zone Eight, knowing he won’t sleep until he knows what’s in there.

The clock on the door to the zone reads 1:32a.m. Massu creeps in, flipping on the lights even though it could draw the attention of any on-call night staff who might be around. He’ll just claim he forgot something if anyone asks.

Walking into a warm freezer doesn’t help the feeling that he’s going to be in deep shit over this. Even though the alarm is clearly disengaged on the donor boxes, he has to tell himself several times that there aren’t actual medical donors inside to convince himself that it’s okay to open the box. Cargo Specialists are under orders never to open donor boxes; they’re to be delivered fully intact to the hospital.

He inches over to one and notices that the latches aren’t engaged, either. Sliding his fingers under the edge of the lid, he closes his eyes and tips it up. It takes a moment for him to open his eyes, and then he realizes that he’s looking at feet. They seem somewhat large, he thinks. When he repeats the process on the other end of the casket, he realizes why.

He’s looking at Koyama. Alarmed, he drops the lid and jumps back, then edges over to the next casket.

This one is Tegoshi, which is almost a relief. But if one is Tegoshi and one is Koyama, who’s the third?

With his feelings of trepidation approximately tripled, he walks around the corner to the third casket, takes a deep breath, and opens it. He figures he’s got about a fifty-fifty chance of seeing his own half-dead face staring back at him.

Instead, he sees Shige.

This is a problem, he thinks. They’ve been assuming that Tegoshi is the only one being framed, but the two others mean Koyama and Shige aren’t safe, either. And if Maruyama knew that there were two Tegoshis but nothing was done about it, then Massu can’t just report these to security.

He’s edging out of the room when he notices the lid of one of the caskets twitching. It flips open, and Tegoshi sits up and turns to look at him.

Massu runs.

 

 

 

Tegoshi has more stamina than Massu, so it stands to reason that his clone would, too. The stairs are out, then. He runs to the elevators instead and jabs the button seemingly a million times before any of them start moving, even though it’s the middle of the night and most of the cargo staff is in bed.

He hears footsteps. The elevator that’s moving is still two floors above him.

More footsteps, and they’re coming closer.

An elevator dings to announce its presence just as clone Tegoshi rounds the corner. Massu dives inside, hits a random button and jabs at the door close button, cursing as Tegoshi approaches. His face is weirdly expressionless, and Massu wishes he hadn’t looked up all the things people have done with clones, because all kinds of creepy thoughts are making their way through his head.

As the door slides shut, Massu has an idea. He hits the emergency stop button and pulls out his phone.

Shige answers with a groan. “What?”

“We’ve got a problem. Sort of.”

Massu explains the situation as quickly as he can, and follows up with his idea. But he doesn’t want to lose the clone, so he ends up just telling Shige to get Koyama and meet him in front of the security hold.

Then he takes a deep breath and opens the door. He’s not cut out for this kind of thing.

The clone is still waiting in front of the elevator, and Massu notes with alarm that it has pushed the button to call another one.

“Were you waiting for me?” he says. “Hey, I think I have something you want.”

That’s not really true. He hopes it’s not a very smart clone. Though from the way it’s looking at him, he’s more than a little worried that he _does_ have something it wants. Then he looks up and sees Shige and Koyama rounding the corner. They’re both in uniform, Shige in a blue shirt and Koyama in an orange one with a matching apron.

Tegoshi starts walking toward Massu, reaching for his duffel bag, and Massu tries not to scream as he starts to run again.

This time, he heads for the stairs on the other side of the cargo bay. He needs to give Shige time to get Koyama and come up with a better plan than Massu’s.

He’s panting by the time he reaches those stairs, and he can still hear the steady beat of Tegoshi’s feet behind him. He wonders about speed; by the time he’s panting, Tegoshi is usually lapping him. This Tegoshi doesn’t seem too concerned about catching him quickly.

Still, he runs when he’s on the stairs, because he doesn’t stand much of a chance of getting away if Tegoshi-clone decides to stop playing cat and mouse there. He leaves the stairs on the next floor up and slows to a quick walk.

Every time he turns to look, Tegoshi is about fifteen feet behind him, with Koyama and Shige in tow. The second Tegoshi gets within lunging distance, Massu thinks, it’s time to run.

But he never does. They make it up the six floors to the holding cells that way, with the three clones following a desperately meandering Massu around each floor. He’s not sure why they’re following him, though he suspects it has something to do with spying.

A security officer he doesn’t recognize is sitting at the desk in front of the holding cells. Massu stumbles to the desk and clings to it, panting, and the security officer watches him uncomfortably.

“Can I help you?”

“Please,” Massu says. “I’m being— Tegoshi Yuya is chasing me. With a knife.”

The security guard looks at him skeptically. “Tegoshi Yuya is in a holding cell right now, there’s no way he could be chasing you.”

“But he is!” Massu says. He’s not sure if it counts as a lie or not.

“Would you like proof? His holding cell will show up on the screen next, top center,” the guard says, gesturing at a screen on the wall.

Sure enough, the screen switches from one set of six security cameras to another. But the holding cell in the top center is empty, door wide open, and Tegoshi isn’t in any of the other sections, either. The only people are two food service workers in orange aprons pushing a cart and a security officer back at the other end of the hallway. There’s something that looks like a hand on the floor at the very edge of the shot of Tegoshi’s cell, but Massu doesn’t mention it.

The security guard curses. “Fuck. Which way did you say he went?”

Massu points in the direction of the clone, which mysteriously hasn’t shown up. Maybe it has a sense of self-preservation. “It was right behind me.”

The guard hits an alarm button and runs to look down the hall. He must see someone, because he shouts, “You there, stop where you are!”

Then he’s off, chasing after the clone. Massu sneaks back to the entrance to the corridor leading to the holding cells and says, “Hello, um, anyone? The guard at the desk just left his post. I’m not sure if he’s supposed to do that or not.”

Koyama and Shige walk out, pushing their cart.

“He did? Well, we’re supposed to sign out, but if he’s not around…” Koyama says.

Shige frowns, “It’s late, I want to sleep. He can slap our wrists for it in the morning.”

They load their cart into the nearest elevator, and Koyama reaches for the button for the middle floor with the fanciest of the ship’s ejection pods. Shige grabs his wrist just as the dumbwaiter on the cart makes a screeching noise and tips back.

“Wait. Security can see elevator destinations,” says a tinny voice from inside it. Massu can see Tegoshi’s eyes in the narrow crack. “Don’t push that.”

“They can hear us, anyway,” Koyama whines.

“They can’t listen to everyone at once. But they have a panel that shows the elevators’ movements, so they can keep an eye on those.”

Massu pushes the button for his own floor when nobody supplies a better idea. The doors open to a bleary-eyed Maruyama, who steps back to let them off.

“You haven’t seen Tegoshi, have you?” He asks.

“Not since I told the guy in front of the holding cells he was following me,” Massu says. He smiles, for good measure. People like it when he smiles. Shige nods.

“Good evening, then,” he says, standing aside. They’ve almost made it past him when Yasuda rounds the corner.

“Oh, hello, Shige. And Koyama and Massu,” he nods. “Wait, why are you wearing food service clothes, Shige?”

Massu’s heart skips a beat, but Shige just frowns. “Lost a bet.”

“Oh,” Yasuda says. “That’s too bad.”

Shige scratches his head. “Yep.”

Yasuda steps back to let them by, but Koyama screams. Then he pauses and says, “Wow, I’m hot.”

The three clones have rounded the corner Yasuda just left. Yasuda and Maruyama look from one group to the other, then they look at each other.

“Why are there two Koyamas and two Shiges?” Yasuda asks, reaching for the gun on his belt as the new trio advances. “Please stay back!”

“Which of you is real?” Maruyama asks.

“I am the real Kato Shigeaki,” the clone Shige says. The real Shige opens his mouth to retort, but hesitates.

“Well, this Kato is wearing the right uniform,” Yasuda says, hesitantly.

Maruyama scratches his head. “But why would an imposter put on the wrong uniform? Isn’t that too obvious?”

“Where did you even get that uniform, Shige?” Massu asks.

“For that matter, why does one group have Masuda and the other Tegoshi?” Yasuda says.

“Because we’re the real ones?” Masuda tries.

The security guards think for a second. “How does that make sense?”

“What are you going to do with the real ones, anyway?” Shige asks. “You only want Tegoshi, don’t you?”

Yasuda looks at Maruyama. They nod, hesitantly.

“So arrest him,” Shige says.

Maruyama looks at Shige hard for a second. “Okay, pop quiz. Only the Shiges can answer.”

The Shiges both nod.

“Who’s Shinji’s love interest at the beginning of _Evangelion 3025_?”

“What?” The clone snaps. “There is no _Evangelion 3025_.”

As far as Massu knows, the clone is correct—no new Evangelion movies have been made in the past decade—but the real Shige smirks and lifts an eyebrow at Maruyama. It must be an inside joke. Massu has learned not to ask about Maruyama and Shige’s inside jokes.

“Got it,” Maruyama nods. He advances toward the clone group. “Tegoshi Yuya, you’re under arrest. Again. Please put your hands behind your head.”

But the clones take off running, and Maruyama and Yasuda scramble after them.

“I vote we go this way,” Shige says, pointing down the hall in the opposite direction.

They all walk quickly, wanting to run but knowing it would only attract unwanted attention. Tegoshi probably wouldn’t appreciate being jostled around, anyway—the cart can’t be comfortable, and Massu suspects that any further reminder that he’s stuck in the role of damsel in distress would get on Tegoshi’s nerves.

A handful of security guards approach them from down the hall, and Massu’s stomach does a somersault. These aren’t friends.

“You there,” one of the guards says. “Have you seen a young man with blond hair in a prisoner’s outfit?”

“No sir,” Koyama says. He knits his brow and widens his eyes. “Did a prisoner escape?”

The guard grimaces. “Nothing to worry about.”

The guards continue on their way, with nothing more than a cursory glance at the food cart.

Eventually they round a corner, and the emergency exit door looms up in front of them. The escape pods on this floor are fairly basic, but they’ll get the job done. Massu is about to heave a sigh of relief when he hears a shout.

He turns to find Koyama on the floor, struggling with another Koyama. The two other clones are running toward them.

Tegoshi’s clone pulls something from his bag and lobs it at Shige, who collapses to the floor. Massu lunges at the clone, knocking his duffel bag out of his grasp and wrestling him to the floor.

The clone is stronger than Tegoshi, and Massu reels when it lands a punch on his chin. As he struggles to sit up, he sees Shige’s clone lunging at the real Shige as he struggles to his feet.

Massu shouts at Shige to duck. The clone has a knife, and Shige is looking disoriented.

Suddenly the cart moves, and there’s a clang. The cart rolls out of the way to reveal Tegoshi crouched in front of Shige, blocking the knife with a metal platter. He pushes back against it until the clone loses its balance, then he slams its head against the wall.

Then the clone Tegoshi is up and coming at Massu again, but he manages to trip it with a kick to the ankle and pin it down.

Koyama has tied his clone’s hands with its own apron strings. He tosses his own apron at Massu, and Massu uses it to tie clone-Tegoshi’s hands. He feels a twinge of guilt as he does so, even though he knows it’s not really Tegoshi.

There’s a shout, and he looks up to see Maruyama and Yasuda running toward them, followed by a large number of security guards.

“Let’s go,” Tegoshi yells, and they dive through the door.

On the other side is a corridor filled with small square hatches, just big enough for people to dive through. Tegoshi throws one open and dives in, and Koyama and Shige follow. The security guards are opening the door when Massu scrambles through and closes the hatch.

The escape pod is small, with about eight seats and a tiny control panel at the far end. It’s designed to be relatively simple to fly, but it only has rudimentary navigation, Massu remembers from orientation. Only a handful of pods designed for crew members, all on the middle floors, have decent navigation systems. The others only need to work for drifting in space without hitting the other escape pods until a rescue ship appears.

Tegoshi and Shige are poring over the instructions and arguing. It seems neither of them know how to fly it, even though it’s supposed to be designed for the layman. There’s a thump outside the hatch, and Massu decides not to bother asking for anyone’s input before pushing the red button that says, “Eject.”

A high pitched mechanical noise comes from below them, and an alarm sounds. Then the whole little pod shudders and pushes off violently.

When he recovers from being thrown against his harness, Massu looks around in awe. The walls of the pod are all set to video screens to show the outside. It’s designed to avoid blind spots, but it makes Massu feel like he’s simply floating in space, with the giant cruise liner above, a small planet to the right, and nothing but stars elsewhere. Between that and the sudden loss of gravity, he gets a strong sense of vertigo. He closes his eyes. A hand slides onto his shoulder and clings, and he guesses Koyama is suffering from the same problem.

In the front, Tegoshi and Shige have stopped arguing and are discussing where to go.

“AKB48 is pretty far, but SDN48 is only a couple of days away,” Tegoshi says, pointing at the planet.

“Let’s go to SDN!” Koyama says, while Massu wonders if being stuck in this pod for two days instead of a week or more is better or worse than going to any planet in the 48 Galaxy other than AKB. The cruise liner offers trips to the other planets for small groups of thrill-seekers while it’s in the galaxy, but Massu has always avoided them.

“I’d rather aim for something close,” Shige says. “They don’t have weapons on the ship to shoot us, but they might call FedGuard. We’ll have an easier time hiding on a planet than in a little escape pod broadcasting SOS to everyone around.”

Tegoshi agrees.

After they’ve fallen silent for a while, Massu asks how Koyama and Shige convinced a security guard to let them in to deliver food in the wee hours of the morning. Tegoshi laughs.

“Somebody wheedled the guards into ordering him fresh pancakes in the middle of the night, every night,” Shige says.

“But you don’t even like sweets,” Massu says. He opens his eyes, tentatively, and finds Tegoshi grinning at him.

“Did you ever figure out why they’re drugging the passengers?” Shige asks after another pause in the conversation.

“It makes people enjoy the cruise more, keeps them from getting bored in the weeks between docking on planets,” Tegoshi says. “The goals being to keep people from giving them negative reviews, get them to recommend the cruise to their friends, and keep them coming back. I found some emails from Yanagisawa to Yoshikawa right before they arrested me.”

Yoshikawa wins for worst boss Massu has ever had, he thinks.

 

 

 

Two days later, Imai Tsubasa, Minister of FedGuard’s Drug Crimes Division, gets a call from a young Space Marshal he trained in drug detection years ago.

At least, that’s who she says she is. Tsubasa is pretty sure Tegoshi Yuya is supposed to be male, but Matsui did say he had a thing for crossdressing. Maybe he did a clone transplant to a female body.

He listens to the Marshal’s story with growing concern. Between the gender discrepancy and the background of the video being what appears to be a love hotel room filled with three other women, he’s not sure it isn’t a hoax, but the names the marshal is listing make a worrying amount of sense.

“Yoshikawa, Yanagisawa, and Shiga were all in a cohort together when they started with JS Corp back in the day, before Shiga left to be Director of the Commercial Spacetravel Safety Association’s Space Marshal Program. I’ll look into it.”

Tegoshi and the tall woman next to him both nod.

“In the meantime,” Tsubasa says. “Where are you? I can send a protective detail to get you somewhere safe.”

The four people look at each other hesitantly, then the tall one next to Tegoshi nods. Tegoshi says, “SDN48.”

Tsubasa chokes on his coffee. That explains the cleavage, then.

 

 

 

“Can we trust him?” Shige asks Tegoshi when they hang up.

Tegoshi frowns. “I think so. He’s our best bet for getting out of here, anyway. If we make a run for it, JS Corp can make us all outlaws using those clones.”

“Well, not me,” Massu points out, scratching at his back. The strap of the bra he’s wearing is itchy. He adds, “Not that I’d rather stay here.”

“And they’ll still be out to get you,” Shige points out.

Massu nods.

“FedGuards it is, then,” Tegoshi says.

“Wait, don’t I get a vote?” Koyama asks, looking up from poking his breast. Even Tegoshi seems bored with his girl parts by now, but Koyama is still excited.

“No,” Shige says. “Besides, Tsubasa is on Venus III. I’ve always wanted to see the real Cave Pools.”

 

 

 

And the Cave Pools of Venus III turn out to be the perfect place to nurse the disorientation of being on solid ground after traveling at warp 4.8.

They’re much bigger, of course, than the baths on the _Placid_ , and prettier. Many of the individual caves are as large as the entire bath on the _Placid_ , and the floors and ceilings are covered in some kind of softly glowing crystal that grows in patches of different colors. Massu would be perfectly happy to sit there watching his hand change colors as he waved it over different groups of crystals, but Shige wants to talk about the future.

“We need a plan, once we’re no longer needed as witnesses,” he points out.

Massu frowns. “That could be a while from now.”

“But we still need to think about it,” Shige says. “You know we’re probably all going to be blacklisted from the cruise companies, right?”

The other three nod. Tegoshi pouts, “I’d probably need plastic surgery or a clone transplant if I wanted to be a Space Marshal again. My face has been all over the news.”

“Couldn’t you move to some other work in the Commercial Spacetravel Safety Association?” Koyama asks.

“None of the other positions get to do much travel,” Tegoshi says. “I’m not ready to settle anywhere.”

“Neither am I,” Shige says. After a while, Koyama and Massu nod. Their jobs were different, but they’d all signed up to work on a cruise ship for the same reason.

“We could go into cargo,” Massu says.

“Or we could start a traveling bakery!” Koyama chimes in. “Restaurant ships are all the rage these days.”

Tegoshi winces. “Or we could be bounty hunters.”

As they all start to bicker, Massu goes back to watching the color patterns on his hands. It’s a good thing they have time to decide, he thinks, because it’s going to take a while to get everyone to agree on anything other than sticking together.

~FIN~


End file.
